ship was deflated, packed up,
and returned to Farnborough by road. Colonel Capper, influenced
doubtless by the success of the _Lebaudy_ airship in France, decided to
rebuild _Nulli Secundus_ as a semi-rigid, but funds were short, and work
could not be commenced on her until the following year. In the
reconstruction every possible portion of the original ship was
ingeniously utilized. The reconstructed ship was taken out for her first
trial in the air on the 24th of July 1908. During this flight of four
miles, lasting eighteen minutes, she suffered various mishaps. After two
more short flights she was deflated at the end of August, and the career
of the _Nulli Secundus_ was ended. Another smaller and fish-shaped
airship, nicknamed the _Baby_, was put in hand during the autumn of
1908, but was not completed until the following spring. To enable her to
carry a more powerful engine the _Baby_ was enlarged by cutting the
envelope in half and introducing a wide belt of gold-beater's skin in
the middle. Rechristened the _Beta_, she was ready for flight at the end
of May, and on the 3rd of June 1910 made a successful night-flight from
Farnborough to London and back, covering a distance of about seventy
miles in just over four hours.

The output of the factory was small, almost insignificant, compared with
the efforts being made by foreign nations. Colonel Capper preferred not
to attempt the construction of rigid airships till more was known of
them. The Zeppelins were the only reputed success, and no Zeppelin, at
that time, had succeeded in making a forced landing without damage to
the ship. But the output of the factory is no true measure of the
progress made. The officers in charge worked with an eye to the future.
Early in 1906 a proposal was put forward by Brevet Colonel J. D.
Fullerton, Royal Engineers, and was warmly supported by Colonel Templer,
for the appointment of a committee consisting of military officers,
aeronauts, mechanical engineers, and naval representatives, to
investigate the whole question of aeronautics. A modified form of this
proposal was put forward three years later, in 1909, by Mr. Haldane,
then Secretary of State for War. He invited Lord Rayleigh and Dr.
Richard Glazebrook, the chairman and the director of the National
Physical Laboratory, to confer with him, and asked them to prepare for
his consideration a scheme which should secure the co-operation of the
laboratory with the services, thus provid